Dental Dread

Mom beamed. And Mom wasn’t an easy-beamer.

Homeschooling four kids into academic brilliance and civic acumen meant every moment mattered. Even about-to-lose-my-five-year-old-mind-I’m-so-terrified moments. Especially those. Having served in the Army, Mom did not buy into the notion that scared little brains could not process new information. Nonsense. If you waited for the perfect circumstances, no one would learn anything.

“Would you, could you, read this book?” Mom held up Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess.

“Nuh-uh. I want to go home.” Truth, I wanted to go anywhere except through that deceptively normal-looking door where torture awaited me. I ran my tongue over my teeth, the sides of my mouth, and my gums where the offending abscess was. One time, I accidentally took a chomp out of my gums when a PB & J sandwich was the intention. I winced at the memory. What would needles in my gums feel like?

An enter-tooth-ologist, or something like that, named Dr. Blood, was about to give me a root canal. No joke. Dr. Blood. I’d read the sign on the door, but the big word after his name was just too big.

“Will you, will you, get a shot?” She dangled the book playfully, trying to make this feel light, instead of what it felt like: that I was about to die.

I shook my head.

“Now Shaun, it’ll only hurt for a second, then you won’t feel a thing. C’mon,” The steely set of Mom’s face said the matter was not up for debate. “Read to me.”

The absolute terror of what I was about to endure at the large, gloved hands of Dr. Blood made it so the words flowed unhindered from my mouth. Under normal circumstances, when I read and stumbled on a word, it made the next word harder to understand, and the next. One scary word and my brain shorted out. Mom would try to calm me, but I wanted to read fast and perfect and…and like her. I wanted to make her proud.

With all the terror of Dr. Blood’s metal tray up next in my queue, reading was easy peasy once I got a rhythm going.

“I would not, could not, in the rain.
Not in the dark. Not on a train,
Not in a car, Not in a tree.
I do not like them, Sam, you see.
Not in a house. Not in a box.
Not with a mouse. Not with a f–“

The door swung open. “Shaun.” The dental assistant was smiling. SMILING?!

“I’m not finished reading,” I protested. It seemed a reasonable deferment. Reading was of paramount importance in our home. I was ready to take on the entirety of Suess’ collection, if only it would keep me on my mom’s lap. Forever.

“That’s okay,” Mom took the book from my unwilling clutch and patted my cheek. “You’ll do great, son. Remember, one shot and then you’ll feel nothing.” She grunted as she handed me over, which may have been because I’d latched my arms and legs around her with every ounce of strength I had.

Once the connection with Mom was severed, I became limp. I’d lost all will to resist. This was going to happen to me. I was going to get a terribly painful, maybe-I’ll-just-die-from-the-agony shot, and then I wasn’t going to be able to feel anything.

Dr. Blood smiled, too. Like no big deal, like we were about to watch him blow glass or groom a dog. Like he enjoyed his work. The hygenist was a whole lot stronger than she looked. The needle, a lot longer. I wasn’t supposed to see, but I swiveled my head when Dr. Blood asked for the most recent x-ray from my file.

She held my head “still” because Dr. Blood had to hold open my mouth and deliver the goods. “You won’t bite me, young man, will you?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but now that he’d put it out there… He must have seen my eyes flicker because he called in a second “helper” like this was Santa’s workshop. Fine by me. Her fingers were even smaller. I crunched through those suckers like baby carrots. Did you know, adrenaline can give a person enough strength to lift an entire car? It can also give a kid’s jaw enough strength to do whatever it needs to do to stop Dr. Blood and his henchwomen from their awful plans.

Did you know, blood tastes just like magnets? I spit her fingers out onto the little apron thingy they put around my neck, the one they wipe their tools on. It’s supposed to protect your clothes. The helper held her hands up to Dr. Blood. It was all very scary how the blood came out of the ends of where her fingertips had been. Mom was never going to get it out of my clothes. The little apron wasn’t nearly enough.

As homeschooled kids, we learn to question everything, to think outside the box, that there’s not just one right way to work a problem.

True: Shaun read his first book, Green Eggs and Ham, while waiting for the dentist.

Also true: Shaun’s mom is an amazing homeschool mom who is an Army veteran.

Also, also true: Shaun was one of my first writing students. I can still remember where I was when his mom called and asked, “What DID you do to my son?” She meant it in the best possible way, as in: my kid’s on fire to write like Walt Whitman. And that was the moment I thought: maybe I can teach writing.

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